Being Up There With the Angels

Crafting Homemade Angel Accessories

By Scarlett Lovitt

If you are looking for accessories that are easy to make, elegant, and not quite the usual these days, you could try making homemade angels. Angels used to be a very common motif in most homes during Victorian times. But even today, they can add a beautiful touch to any room. Many people associate angels with Christmas time, but in fact you can decorate your home with them at any time of the year.

Here are some easy angel accessories that you can make. They will add a certain elegance to your home, and they also make original and beautiful gifts to your friends.

Angel Potpourri

If you would like to put a potpourri in your living room to add its lovely fragrance, then you could make this angel potpourri. It is really simple, requiring only the following materials:

Pine cone, potpourri (with flowers of just one color), craft glue, glitter, a 1-inch bead, silk flower leaves (for the wings), and a black permanent marker.

• Draw a face on the bead with the black marker.

• Attach the bead to the top of the pine cone, using the glue to anchor it in place.

• Put some glue on the top of the bead and then sprinkle gold glitter and pieces of the potpourri to make the angel's hair.

• Put flowers from the potpourri between the layers of the pine cone, filling all of the spaces. As this builds up, add gold glitter as borders.

• Make arms for the angel from two potpourri seed pods. Add gold glitter on the ends to represent hands.

• Glue the flower leaves onto the back as wings for the angel. If you want, you can decorate them with glitter, or leave them plain.

Once this is made, you have a lovely ornament for your living room that also has the gorgeous fragrance of a potpourri.

Recycled Light Bulb Angel

And what about an angel that is made from a recycled light bulb?

This is also fairly easy.

• Take a burned out light bulb and paint it white.

• Glue it to a white bottle cap.

• Weave a pipe cleaner round the top of the bulb to make the hands and arms and then glue at the back.

• Take a piece of felt, fold it into a triangle and attach to the top of the bulb to look like a bodice.

• Take a round piece of Styrofoam and paint a face on it.

• Cut pieces of corkscrew to use as hair. Attach in strips to the Styrofoam ball. Then glue it to the top of the bulb.

• Form wings from gold pipe cleaner and fill in with tissue paper or gauze. Then glue them to the back.

• Glue a piece of lace or felt to the bulb as a skirt.

These angel accessories will look good in any living room, matching other beautiful accessories, such as a floral rug (or any other pretty rug that is of an appropriate color), a wooden cuckoo clock, or a decoupage vase. They are easy to make and your family and friends are sure to love them. •

© 2010 Scarlett Lovitt. All rights reserved.

12/27/10